Education does not serve capitalism, and vice versa – 09/08/2023 – Laura Machado

There are many expectations from society regarding basic education. We are on the path to universal access from 6 to 17 years old and, as expected, we hope that education will propel us towards a more prosperous, fair and participatory society.

Article 205 of our Constitution is no less ambitious in establishing that the objective of education is “the full development of the person, their preparation for the exercise of citizenship and their qualification for work”.

Just like our Charter, none of the international declarations to which Brazil is a signatory, such as Incheon for example, fail to mention the importance of the role of education for productive inclusion and work. None of them simplify education to this single role.

However, we have many expectations and a lot to achieve. As a country advances in offering more years of study to its population, it is expected that the development of skills for the world of work and, consequently, employability and productivity will also advance.

When analyzing the evolution of the Brazilian population’s years of schooling from 1980 to 2019, we observed that we went from an adult population with 2.6 years of average schooling to 8.1 years — an increase of 211% of Brazilians’ time in school. However, GDP (Gross Domestic Product) per worker, in thousand dollars (deflated for 2017), goes from 31 to 32, just a 3% increase.

The Brazilian result is different from that of other countries, such as Chile and Malaysia, which, by increasing the years of schooling, also increased productivity considerably. The preparation component for the job market and economic prosperity is one of the responsibilities of education, it is neither the only nor the least important.

It is a problem for Brazilian society that education does not generate productivity. We know that it is possible to generate more individual and social wealth, as happens in other countries.

There are two hypotheses for this Brazilian phenomenon: either education needs to improve the development of skills for the world of work and/or the Brazilian economy is not knowing how to take advantage of the greater education of younger generations.

It is urgent that we correct both, both by developing a curriculum that is more friendly to the production system and by encouraging the production system not to underuse workers’ knowledge.

The implications for public policy are immediate: we need to analyze whether the basic education curriculum is attentive to the needs of the world of work. Educational policy needs to generate this rapprochement. Economic policy also needs to assess whether it is adequately allocating and taking advantage of the already acquired skills of recently graduated Brazilian workers.

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